


like tired dust i have fallen asleep on mirrors and windowpanes

by InaccessibleRail



Series: under my cypresses [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 16:24:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1434991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InaccessibleRail/pseuds/InaccessibleRail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's strange that I should think of him as invincible when I myself had to drag his unconscious body out of water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like tired dust i have fallen asleep on mirrors and windowpanes

**Author's Note:**

> Only explanation I can give: Another HYDRA base has been (just about) successfully dismantled—it's just that SHIELD had Steve’s DNA on file once, and HYDRA made sure not to miss out. It proves good for cooking up stuff that can remind him of what it’s like being sickly and weak—but more importantly, it reminds someone else.
> 
> Title is from "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" because _fucking titles_ amirite... (This series has nothing whatsoever to do with Nietzsche. I just like the imagery.)

He staggers and falls into a thin windowpane, through it, down onto the shards two floors below. He lands on his side and lays there, very still. I watch him for almost a full minute, I wait for him to pull himself to his feet but he doesn't. They've tampered with him. Of course. It's what they do. Only I never could have imagined them getting their hands on him for long enough to actually do damage.

Apparently they could.

It's strange that I should think of him as invincible when I myself had to drag his unconscious body out of water.

Nobody's coming for him: seems he finished them off in spite of the compromised state they put him in.

A shudder runs through me. (What did they do?)

I walk to him and roll him over with the underside of my boot to his shoulder. He's unresponsive. I crouch down to get a good look at his face. My mission. (Formerly.)

Here’s my target, once again served up for me to end as by a kindness of fate. (I don't believe in fate. I can barely formulate the concept. Nor kindness.)

I study his face and it makes me ache like before. The confusion surges and spins me up—followed by frustration, followed by despair. But I don't know these sensations, they’re glimmers from a thousand years ago. Before the dark that I know is not death but not sleep either. Just cold and stillness, like an empty landscape. (I don't know any empty landscapes.)

I move my hand (my real hand) to clasp his neck but it stops in front of his parted lips instead to feel if he's breathing. I'm closing my eyes like I'm tired and about to fall asleep and I'm thinking about him, I'm next to him in a narrow bed and he’s very still and my hand (my unreal hand, but it's not metallic in my mind) is against his parted lips and his breath is rushing softly, softly across my fingers, and I’m relieved of some irrational fear.

I shouldn't, but I do. I heft him up and start dragging him away. He’s heavy but I can handle it. All the while I wait for someone to stop me: the redhead, the winged one, any which one. I listen for them but nobody follows. The shadows nestled around buildings are stationary, hardly anyone’s out.

Somewhere between the long walk to an unobserved corner of the city and the moment I let go of him to drop down into a heap on a dirty concrete floor, he mumbles something that sounds like a question. Sounds like a name.

But I'm not listening. I'm not seeing when I watch him throughout the night.

 

I decide to leave when the sun begins to catch in his hair. It's a spontaneous decision. As spontaneous as I get.

He's been stirring a few times, and trembled for a long while until it faltered and stopped. I get to my feet swiftly and turn from him without a moment’s hesitation. I'm decided now. I'm not going to think about him again. I'm going to get away from him. I'm going to stop following him around like a dog looking for a master. (Like a man looking for a past. I don't have a past. I'm no one. I'm not his: he's not mine.)

I know this is not the first time. I know I didn't spring fully formed and armored from a split skull. I remember things as I'm doing them; I know, from some repeated action, not to think more than on the key points. Where to go, how to get there, what to do there. The operative is always to find and end someone: it's the only clear thing in my mind. The rest is only motions. If I'm hungry I eat, if I'm tired I sleep. But I'm hardly ever anything. I know the feel of a rifle as if it's always slung over my back. I know the hilt of a knife and the splutter of blood. How it dries stiffly into fabric, how it smears thickly on skin and trickles down fast on metal. Without a target I’m a blur. The key points change and slip from me. I wander around with a million possibilities but none of them speak right to me.

I see him trailing after me at midday as I walk through a supermarket. He's not making any effort to be unseen—he's holding his arms around himself tightly, and it looks as though he’s having trouble keeping his head up. I wonder how long he's been following me around. It's disconcerting, nearly as disconcerting as everything else, to think I haven't noticed him all day. He might have happened upon me just now by chance, by fated kindness. I pocket a few things (chocolate bars, gumdrops, an apple) that I don't care to think of why, and bolt through the storeroom exit.

The food soon melts in my left pocket, in the other I stroke the apple with my thumb. I’m thinking about him again, his face does that to me. I’m thinking about his hungry frame and his willowy arms above his head as he lies back on a rooftop in the unrelenting summer sun. I’m running up stairs with ice cream running down my forearms, sweat running down my back. I'm thinking about him as I'm thinking about hurrying up the stairs. I'm thinking I open the door with my elbow and he perches on his elbow, to look back at me. He smiles.

 

I shake him, but he reappears. I do it again, and then again. I'm stupid for not leaving, for continuing on foot in broad daylight. I know I'm not really trying. But my mind is a blur, then a blank, then a sharp pain, then a long ache. Then it starts all over again. I know I'm not thinking: I'm remembering. He flickers back and forth from being tall and built to being not as tall and unwillingly frail. I feel him coming after me, swaying on his feet. Maybe I even slow down as he loses me for too long.

In the darkest hour it’s me who’s somehow dragged my feet toward him. I close in on him without having meant to, I go to him without realizing.

I see him by the harbor in the industrial park. He keeps upright by way of a derelict shipping container. I sink down with a knee to the ground beside him and check his pupils, take his pulse. There’s a film of sweat covering his face, he’s cold and pallid. Both pupils and pulse are irregular. When I take my hand off him he leans forward as though to whisper something in my ear or lean his head against my shoulder so I push him back. I keep him upright now; he looks as dismayed as he's capable. I hear the distant whirring of propellers.

They're coming for him. His company.

His comrades.

I give in to whatever’s currently tugging at me, urging me to act. I lean in and my nose grazes his cheek and then his ear and then his hair, and the side of my face is touching his. I’m remembering his face in front of mine, a look of dismay: as much as he’s capable. He mutters things that have no sound in me and puts a rag against my bleeding forehead—I put my lips against his bloodied lips. I know it's not a kiss because I know what kissing him is like: chronologically displaced knowledge, but I know it.

He says whatever it was he meant to say before, and I know it’s my name, (but only when leaving his mouth.) I leave him and they take him away and they don't come for me. I watch from a not quite safe enough distance until they're far gone. (I don't know if I'm disappointed though I know I would have fought them, unsure yet if I would have really tried to not be taken with him.)

 

I’m thinking about his absence in rooms, in apartments, in cities, in empty landscapes. (I ache even though he’s no longer here.) I think on his absence.

I’m thinking I’m alone.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> yeah well um
> 
> forgive me for my thieving ways
> 
> here's something for you:  
>  _"Like tired dust I have fallen asleep on mirrors and window-panes: everything has been taken from me, nothing’s been given; I become thin—I am almost equal to a shadow."_


End file.
